Author ORCID Identifier

Barnali Choudhury: 0000-0002-5762-2957

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2024

Source Publication

Surya Deva and David Birchall, eds. Research Handbook on Human Rights and Business, 2nd ed. (forthcoming)

Keywords

Corporate Law, International Law, United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights; Principled Pragmatism; Human Rights; Climate Change; Business Models; Fossil Fuels

Abstract

Business has been good for Big Oil. Last year, the five largest Western oil companies raked in over USD$200 billion in profits. Last year, the global carbon emissions from the fossil fuel industry also peaked. Companies produced over 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions during the year and global warming hit a new sustained high. Increasing temperatures also caused socio-economic impacts such as deaths, displacement of people, loss of employment and adverse impacts on food security.

While numerous studies have drawn links between the corporate activities of the fossil fuel industry and the devastating environmental and human rights impacts of climate change, efforts to curb these business practices have been few. One noticeable exception is the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), which captures both human rights generally as well as the human rights impacts of climate change.

The expected conduct of business under the UNGPs, however, are built on a premise of principled pragmatism. That is, under the UNGPs, corporations are not legally obliged to respect human rights. Rather, they have a responsibility to respect them. Moreover, the source of this corporate responsibility does not arise from binding legal obligations, but from soft law and/or society’s expectations. The foundation for corporate responsibilities under the UNGPs are, therefore, somewhat tenuous.

A further difficulty is that because the UNGP drafting was guided by pragmatism, they leave many of the foundational economic causes which give rise to corporate harms to human rights untouched. This soft-touch approach may have been necessary to overcome the failure of earlier attempts at regulation. However, more than 10 years after the UNGPs were drafted, it is time to revisit the UNGPs to explore how their limitations can be overcome.

This chapter aims to do just that by focusing on the business model of fossil fuel companies and examining whether the UNGPs are able to address the risks to human rights and climate change that these businesses are causing. It explores the business model of the fossil fuel industry and examines the impacts of this industry on climate change and human rights. It further assesses whether the UNGPs adequately addresses the business model of the fossil fuel industry and if not, where gaps remain. Ultimately, the chapter proposes ways in which the fossil fuel industry’s business model can be better tied to human rights outcomes, focusing on, and beyond, the UNGPs.

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